Ultra Slim Blu-ray Laptop Drives Prepped

With Blu-ray drives finally getting cheaper, it’s about time they got smaller too.

Thankfully Panasonic has come to the rescue bringing some New Year cheer with the news it is readying a Blu-ray notebook drive which is just 9.5mm thick – a whole 3.2mm less than the typical 12.7mm form factor and ideal for ultraportable machines.

Full read and write capability is in there too with the unnamed unit capable of burning Blu-ray discs at 2x as well as handling the less format-warring CDs and DVDs.

Interestingly, for what has always been the more transitional of the next gen formats, the new drive is also thinner than anything the HD DVD camp has come up with. Toshiba boasts a 7mm HD DVD drive is possible, but it hasn’t demoed anything yet.

Invoking what will become a ubiquitous line on TR for the next few days: ”further details will be revealed at CES…”